Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Kdrama With Me...

...heavy on the drama.

Kdrama, or Korean Drama, is my new obsession. Rather, it is The Moon Embracing the Sun
that is the obsession. What's not to like about 19th century costume
drama with intrigue, betrayal, love, loss, and happily ever after mixed
with a bit of magic and a love triangle or 3? The actors are handsome
and pretty and the costumes are gorgeous enough to send me googling to
find out the background of each, like the hair pin that gives the name
to this particular Korean costume drama. Just beautiful.

This is
my second time through this particular Kdrama, but only because I
figured out watching it on my laptop provided a lot more detail than
watching it on my Kindle Fire. There is something to be said for size.

Synopsis:
Court official's daughter bumps into crown prince climbing over the
wall of the palace grounds to get away from the protocol and hassle of
being crown prince and he nearly falls on top of her. She thinks he is a
thief. He tells her he is a eunuch. She is at the palace compound to
watch her older brother get the award for best scholar and he's running
away. It is love at first sight, even if he is a thief, as only love can
hit us when the girl, Heo Yeon Woo, is 13 and the prince, Lee Hwan, is
15. She is a learned girl who can read and write Chinese and knows
philosophy. He's a spoiled prince with a penchant for disguising himself
and running away from protocol to see what's really going on in the
country outside the high walls of the palace compound.

Yeon Woo
eventually discovers he is the Crown Prince and she becomes one of his
little sister's companions. Min Hwa's other companion is another court
official related to the Queen Dowager, who is a nasty piece of work and
not at all bothered having people killed, as long as the king doesn't
know about it or get his hands bloody. That's what the Minister of the
Home Office is for. Besides, he's a member of her clan, the Yoon clan, and greed runs in the clan.
His daughter is the princess's other companion and she is a nasty piece
of work who hates Yeon Woo because she is everything that Yoon Bo Kyung
is not -- queenly and not at all vicious, mean-spirited, or duplicitous.

Yeon Woo is chosen as the Crown Prince's bride-to-be until the
Queen Dowager has the chief shaman call down a curse that will kill her
so that Bo Kyung will be the Crown Prince's bride and eventually Queen.
Too bad the Crown Prince sees through Bo Kyung's polite words and smiles
and refuses to consummate the marriage during the 8 years of their
married life. Yeon Woo is presumed dead by her family, and the Crown
Prince, and his half-brother, Yang Myung, who is also in love with Yeon
Woo. But she was only sleeping and the chief shaman had her dug up after
her burial and registers her as a shaman with the local temple.

For
8 years, the shaman travels around the country with Yeon Woo, who has
lost her memory and has been told she was possessed by a powerful spirit
and found wandering in the streets before becoming a shaman, her maid,
Seol, and a street urchin with the gift of sight, Jan Shil, while Yang
Myung wanders just a few steps ahead of the rebels that want him to over
throw his brother and become King, and Bo Kyung and Lee Hwan live
separate lives while their ministers steal the country blind and gather
power to supplant the king once he sires and heir on the Minister of
Home Office's daughter.

Okay, enough of the synopsis. Even
reading the subtitles cannot dampen the enthusiasm of seeing such a
wonderful spectacle or falling a little bit in love with the actors, or
even laughing at the head eunuch's exasperation and shock at his
master's antics. He suffers in silence -- most of the time -- and the
comedy is a breath of fresh air after the passion and tension of the
main story. Lee Hwan's chief eunuch is kind of cute and funny which is a
nice counterpoint to the very handsome young men playing the lead
parts. One can even forgive Princess Min Hwa's spoiled brattiness and
utter devotion to Yeon Woo's older brother even if she did ruin his life
and his future. After all, she is so cute in a kitten with a whip
fashion.

But life goes on, and so must I.

You will have to admit the actors are all quite handsome.

At
any rate, there are other things to fill my world, like sees, plants,
and supplies to create my container garden. I even plan to put a couple
of trees in the house, specifically a dwarf Meyer lemon and dwarf fig
tree. I do so love lemons and I've never actually had a fresh fig. I've
eaten plenty dried figs and I love Fig Newtons.

Then there is
bread to bake and food to cook, although I must admit I'm not much in a
food eating mood, unless you count the occasional biscuit or the
omelets, peanut butter, and fruit that I eat once a day. I also like to
have hot chai, but have given it up this week for fruit juices, most of
which I water down with real water. For some reason, the juices seem a
bit heavy at times, though they are delicious.

And then there is
work. I ended up with my 7th account since starting 2-1/2 months ago
and seem to always be in QC hell (i.e., making very little to no money
because I have to learn the protocols for another whole hospital or
health care system). It is hard to keep the differences in mind when
switching between so many different accounts. I think I've finally
convinced my supervisor to settle me into 3 accounts, one of which is
all typing. I've learned that in order to make money stability is key,
and so are lines, especially when those lines are typed and not edited.
When it takes me more time to edit the lines than it would to type the
entire report, especially when I'm getting paid half as much for the
edited lines, over time and typing full reports is key. I might actually
make enough money to live on once I get settled in.

The best
part about switching jobs, once I get out of QC hell and make the money
I'm capable of making when I have the same accounts all the time, is
that I bargained for 14 vacation days and ended up with 43.46 vacation
days. All those years of working for a company this company bought out
is the vacation time, nearly 6 weeks. I have never had that much time to
use in my whole working life. I plan on taking at least a couple of
vacations for 2 weeks at a time and use the other nearly 2 weeks to
carve out a 3-day weekends. All paid in full. That is definitely worth
changing jobs for, as are the benefits, chance to make more money, and a
health care plan that does not cost me more than a month's rent every
month. Made me feel like I did when I was newly divorced and working 2
jobs to pay for the babysitter for my 3 young sons. Rather defeats the
purpose of working if all your money goes for someone else's benefit and
there is little to nothing left for the necessities of life: food,
clothing, a roof over your head, and utilities to power the furnace when
it gets cold. Into every life a little rain . . . and all that stuff.

As
long as the rain does come through the ceiling in the kitchen and
getting someone to repair said hole and the roof are proving difficult
at best. Like I said, into every life a little rain. I am optimistic
that I will be able to get everything handled. I'll do whatever it takes
to keep my cabin in the mountains even if it means working more hours
and finding someone to do the repairs, even if I have to drag him into
the house and make him watch Kdrama